1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a dental filling/restoration kit, including a photopolymerizable filling/restoring material, and an adhesive material, which is used for adhesion between a tooth and the filling/restoring material by curing the adhesive material before filling the filling/restoring material.
2. Background Art
Conventionally, a small defect (cavity) formed because of the decay or the like of a tooth has been treated by filling a metal material. However, in recent years, a resin-based filling/restoring material containing a polymerizable monomer, an inorganic filler, and a polymerization initiator as its main components has been used preferentially instead of the metal material, because a color tone comparable to a natural tooth color can be imparted and its operation is easy. The resin-based filling/restoring material per se usually has no adhesive to a tooth, and hence the resin-based filling/restoring material and a tooth are generally caused to adhere to each other by interposing a dental adhesive material therebetween.
Further, the adhesive material also includes a polymerizable monomer and a polymerization initiator as its main components like the filling/restoring material, and the adhesiveness of the adhesive material to a tooth is enhanced by including a compound excellent in adhesiveness to a tooth as a part of the polymerizable monomer. A monomer containing an acidic group is particularly known to be suitable as such polymerizable monomer excellent in adhesiveness to a tooth. Further, such adhesive material including such polymerizable monomer having an acidic group as a polymerizable monomer is provided with a tooth demineralizing ability by additionally containing water, and the monomer having an acidic group is also excellent in permeability into a tooth. Thus, using the adhesive material is very advantageous, because it is possible to eliminate troublesome pretreatment usually performed for improving adhesiveness, that is, demineralization treatment with an acidic aqueous solution and permeation treatment with a polymerizable monomer excellent in affinity to a tooth.
By the way, in the resin-based filling/restoring material and its adhesive material described above, a photopolymerization initiator is advantageously used as the polymerization initiator because of its short curing time, its easy operability, and the like. In particular, there is preferably adopted a photopolymerization initiator whose functions are induced by visible light that is harmless to a living body. There are frequently used an α-diketone compound such as camphorquinone or a phosphorus-based compound such as an acylphosphine oxide as such visible light polymerization initiator. Of those, the α-diketone compound is very useful as a photopolymerization initiator for a filling/restoring material, because the use of the α-diketone compound in combination of an amine compound increases the curing rate of the filling/restoring material and makes the curing depth of the filling/restoring material larger.
Further, it is more preferred that the photocuring of the filling/restoring material can be performed by light irradiation in a shorter time, because a burden on a patient can be alleviated. It is proposed that, in order to perform the curing in a much shorter time, it is effective to use the α-diketone compound and the amine compound in combination of a photoacid generator such as an aryliodonium salt or a triazine compound (Patent Literatures 1 and 2). Further, it has been found that an aromatic amine compound is more active among amine compounds, and that, when not only the aromatic amine but also an aliphatic amine are used in combination in a system using the above-mentioned photoacid generator in combination, the curing activity of the aromatic amine compound is significantly improved, and the filling/restoring material is polymerized and cured in an extremely short time even in the case of using a weak light source (Patent Literature 3).